New Micro-Credentialing Feature from Performance Matters Gives K-12
Districts the Ability to Create, Manage, and Award Digital Badges for
Professional Development Work

Part of the Professional Development solution, the new Badging
feature enables educators to view badge criteria, register for courses,
and track their progress — all in one seamless system

August 09, 2017 07:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

SANDY, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Micro-credentials and their digital representation, badges, provide a
powerful way to identify, recognize, and verify an educator’s skills and
competencies. Yet, tracking this information is often cumbersome,
requiring individuals to use one system to manage their professional
learning and another to track their badges. To provide a seamless,
integrated solution for micro-credentialing, Performance
Matters has introduced a new Badging feature as part of its PM
Professional Development Management solution.

With Performance Matters Badging, K-12 school districts now have the
ability to define, create, manage, and issue badges for professional
development (PD) work. Administrators can view all available badges,
including which badges need action, review, or approval. They can also
view the details of any badge, such who has earned it or the status of
those completing it. In addition, they can choose to automatically issue
badges upon the completion of specified PD coursework, or they can
manually award them after assessing the evidence submitted by the earner
against the criteria.

For badge earners, the Badging feature provides a convenient way to view
the criteria for any micro-credential or badge. Further, because the
badges are linked to the district’s online PD catalog within the
Performance Matters PM Professional Development Management solution,
educators can easily register for the courses they need to earn a badge
and track their progress — all in one system. It also gives badge
earners an easy way to display and share an online record of their
achievements.

“We created a micro-credentialing program to provide a consistent
structure for developing and recognizing teacher leaders district-wide.
Our biggest challenge, however, was that it required a lot of manual
work to track which teachers were taking which courses, and who had
completed a micro-credential and who hadn’t,” said Dr. Brent Raby,
assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for West Aurora School
District 129 in Illinois. “Performance Matters Badging will streamline
this process, which will save us time and make our program more
transparent. Plus, because the Performance Matters system is so
flexible, it can grow with us as our micro-credentialing program grows.”

Performance Matters Badging is compliant with the Open
Badgesspecification. The badges can also be exported to Open
Badges Backpacks or shared on social and professional platforms.

About Performance Matters

By combining powerful student and educator growth solutions with
real-time analytics, Performance Matters helps K-12 school districts
drive continuous improvement of instruction and learning. The
Performance Matters Platform includes tools for student assessment
development and delivery, as well as educator professional development,
evaluation, observation, and calibration. The Performance Matters
Platform is used by more than 1 million educators and 11 million
students in school districts across the country. For information, visit www.performancematters.com.